In Town at Ease With Its Firearms, Tightening Gun Rules Was Resisted

I post this for a particular reason. In the aftermath of the slaughter of the innocents in Connecticut, the town where it took place was often noted on TV as a typical American rural town, where folks all knew each other etc–a regular Norman Rockwell hometown. and yet, as this article notes, there was the split between those who loved guns and shooting and those who wanted much less of it…this division of concern I believe reflects what is going on in our nation, and, as usual, believe what you will. Your choice. But this underlying rift was there for some time.

People in the rural, hilly areas around Newtown, Conn., are used to gunfire. In one woodsy stretch, southeast of downtown, the Pequot Fish and Game Club and the Fairfield County Fish and Game Protective Association, where members can fish in ponds and hunt pheasant, lie within a mile of each other, and people who live nearby generally call them good neighbors.

But in the last couple of years, residents began noticing loud, repeated gunfire, and even explosions, coming from new places. Near a trailer park. By a boat launch. Next to well-appointed houses. At 2:20 p.m. on one Wednesday last spring, multiple shots were reported in a wooded area on Cold Spring Road near South Main Street, right across the road from an elementary school.

Yet recent efforts by the police chief and other town leaders to gain some control over the shooting and the weaponry turned into a tumultuous civic fight, with traditional hunters and discreet gun owners opposed by assault weapon enthusiasts, and a modest tolerance for bearing arms competing with the staunch views of a gun industry trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has made Newtown its home.